Mr Rowlands was a Magistrate for thirty years. He lives in Wales.
Corpus Juris is the EU-wide system of criminal justice that you will be living under if the EU gets its way. The EU envisions the territory of the member states of the Union as a single legal area with delegated prosecutors based in all the member states. You will have no say over their selection or how they operate and if you are British the protections you once had from unlawful arrest, detention without trial, and prosecutorial persecution during trial will be lost.

The implications for our legal system and individual rights are immense. The EU’s own official book, Corpus Juris, makes this astoundingly clear: “What we propose is a set of penal rules. . .designed to ensure. . .a more efficient means of repression” (CJ, Page 40). The prosecutorial rules and powers are repressive:

CORPUS JURIS PROSECUTORIAL POWERS

1) “Powers of investigation of the European Public Prosecutor (EPP) “will include g) To make requests for a person’s remand in custody. . .for a period of up to 6 months, renewable for 3 months, where there are reasonable grounds to suspect that the accused has committed one of the offences defined above, or good reasons for believing it necessary to stop him committing such an offence. . .” (Page 90, Article 20).

This means that the EPP can incarcerate someone for months without charge merely because he thinks they might have committed an offence or might commit an offence. It appears that there is no limit to the number of 3-month extensions. This practise was outlawed in Britain more than 300 years ago as part of the Habeus Corpus Act (1689) which is now incorporated into Britain’s Bail Acts.

2) “A European warrant for arrest, issued on the instructions of the EPP by a national judge, is valid across the whole territory; any person arrested thus may be transferred to the territory of a state where he is required to be” during the preparatory stage or at trial (Page 106 b).

You could wind up imprisoned in Greece, Spain, Italy Poland – anywhere in the EU. You would be exiled from your country and isolated from your family and friends. You would find it difficult even to arrange your defence, and as there is no habeas corpus in the EU, you could lie in jail for a very long time.

There are no jurors, simple or otherwise. Your rights, held since Magna Carta, to be judged by your peers have been eliminated. Lay magistracy has been exterminated. The genius of our Common Law, which involves the community in administering criminal justice at first instance through the magistrates and later through the jury, has been deliberately destroyed. In an age when the concept of local community is often described as important, it is absurd and wrong that it should be removed from the administration of law.

4) “For the rules on jurisdiction. . .the choice is made by the EPP (the prosecutor). . .in the interests of the efficient administration of justice” (Page 118).

Once again the prosecutor calls the shots, and the criterion is the “administration” of justice, not justice itself.

5) “In the case of partial or total acquittal appeal is also open to the EPP as a prosecuting party” (Page 120 article 27.2 )

The meaning of this is plain – the accused can be tried twice for the same offence thus creating the state of “double jeopardy” which has been banned in Britain for centuries.

6) “Section 6 of the EC Human Rights constitutes an excellent model for the rights which should be granted to the accused;. . .however case law has not yet decided whether being held in custody makes a person an ‘accused ‘ person. . .” (Page 126).

In this Kafkaesque mode of thinking, anybody can be locked up without becoming an accused person and, since the person has not been accused, he or she will have none of the protections afforded by the human rights legislation or the protections already provided by our Common Law.

7) “We do not propose to open up the possibility to other victims. . .such as consumers or other businesses” (Page 130).

Reading the whole page it is clear that the right to be a civil party in a criminal case is limited to the European Commission. No individuals or businesses have any right to be a civil party.

8) “Anglo-Saxon practises” that rule some evidence is inadmissible (such as that obtained under hearsay) will be watered down to reduce protections to the accused (Page 134). “Hence the need to provide for a ‘European Deposition’ and to make it clear that, in English law, this constitutes a new exception to the hearsay rule” (Page 136).

Later on the same page there are arrangements for an accountant appointed by the Court to give evidence on documents without the whole document being presented and thus being open to challenge by the defence. There is therefore no protection against a) material being quoted out of context or b) material helpful to the defence being omitted. The accountant is appointed by the Court from a list proposed by the prosecutor. The idea that all the evidence against a person, who may be you or me, cannot be examined by our counsel evokes Soviet tyranny.

9) “The judgement must be given publicly, but access to the court may be denied to the Press and public during all or part of the proceedings” (Page 142 Article 34.3).

This is claimed to be for the protection of the accused, but it could easily be used to cover up abuses of power by the authorities.

SUMMARY

The implications of Corpus Juris are far-reaching, yet it is almost unknown even to legal professionals. The government has played it down, and it is apparently too dry a subject to attract the attention of the media. If Britain comes under the rule of Corpus Juris, it will be the most backward step in human rights in this country that we have ever known.